


Coming Down

by Eilinelithil



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-23
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-10 21:17:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4408007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After West Group steals Mutiny, and Joe shows up to protest his innocent to Cameron, cold hard realizations leave Joe with only one way to go - and like a cornered rat, he comes out fighting for the ones he loves - not for the faint hearted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s disclaimer: I do not own Halt and Catch Fire and its associated characters. AMC does, for which, for the most part, they have my utmost respect. No copyright infringement is intended in writing these stories.
> 
> My deepest respect also goes to the talented actors that brought to life the characters we see in HaCF. My portrayal of the characters here is based on my perception of the work of Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishé, Toby Huss, Aleksa Palandino, and James Cromwell.
> 
> With the exception of personal interpretation and expansions, extracts from existing episodes of the series remain the copyright of the story and teleplay writers: Christopher Cantwell, Christopher C. Rogers, Jamie Pachino, Jason Cahill, Zack Whedon, Dahvi Waller, and Jonathan Lisco.
> 
> Other assorted original characters (i.e. those that don’t really appear in the show) are my own creation, and they, along with the original material presented here are © Eirian Phillips 2015.
> 
> Story is rated for mature readers, according to whatever rating system is adopted these days for Fan Fiction. It changes on a site by site basis… It was so much easier way back when…
> 
> Feedback is always welcome and comments/emails are usually answered.
> 
> Characters and events are purely fictitious, and any similarity to anyone living is entirely coincidental.

_Prologue_

 

He turned slowly, the faces of those in the room blurring, like specters, and still high enough to be detached from the fear; from the instinct for self-preservation, Joe opened his mouth as if to speak, to protest again, but the room around him shifted and he staggered.  Bosworth's face swam before him as the man stepped forward, to corral him out – away, even as his memory replayed the last ten minutes of a life gone well and truly south.

_"Where's Cameron...? Something's happened and... I need to talk to her… wh-where, where's Cameron? WHERE'S CAMERON? Ah, God… I need to talk to her-something's wrong-um… where… where's… Where's Cameron? I came straight here. I-I didn't know… about this. I di—I didn't… did not know that this was happening-I'd no idea that… um… Wheeler shut me out, and..._

_"No, I…_

_"I'm… I'm g— moving. To California. I… I… I… I gave my notice WEEKS ago. I… uh-no reason I would have done this-I'm on your side! I wouldn't DO this. I promise you, I wouldn't do this. The—I wouldn't do this. It's uh… doesn't make any sense._

_"Oh, there's this guy… Jesse. He did this. I don't--- eh-be-uh…I… I didn't—um… Damn it! Uh… I… I don't even work there. I'm going to California. Cameron, I need you to… hear me.'_

_"You need to leave."_

_"No, you don't understand."_

_"Now, Joe."_

The chill in the air hit him; a moment of clarity… fleeting, leaving him all the more dizzy… disoriented, alone and nauseated. The town-car swam before his eyes. _'Christ, what the FUCK was I thinking?  Did I even make sense in there?  What am I even DOING here?  She made her bed-she made her choices._

_'Sara. Sara?'_

He stumbled toward the wavering car, belly clenching as the nausea rose, as the wave of temporary, returning high closed over his head, mingled with a reality biting like a ravening beast. The truth… suffocating. _'Stupid. How could I have been such a fucking fool?'_

"Joe?"

_'An easy mark, like some kind of rookie intern… Jesus!'_

"Joe? What's going on?"

"Sara…"

He reached for her and she came to his arms, a balm… a breeze as she snuggled, nuzzled at him – a trusting… innocent.

"…we're going home," he said. "Had to make a stop first." _'God, I love you.  How could I have let him do this to you? Do you even KNOW?'_

"Is everything okay?" she murmured, reaching up a hand to his face.  He caught her hand and kissed her palm, before holding her chilled fingers against his cheek.

"No." In that moment he could only answer truthfully – all pretense gone and she lifted her head to look at him, an uncomprehending mist of worry settled across her face.  He shook his head and cupped her cheeks in his hands.

"Ssssh," he said, drawing a lie over them like a blanket. "It's all right; be fine." _'But I don't WANT to lie to you, Sara. God knows, this is going to hurt you enough. I'M going to hurt you… but I have to spare you this, don't you see?'_

He pressed his lips to hers.  His own pain, his own desperation taking control, and surrendering to the need to hold on to the moment, he shifted and deepened the kiss. His mouth possessed hers. He held her closer still as she all but clambered into his lap. _Sara, my beautiful Sara, by this time tomorrow, you'll hate me.'_ Tears fought to escape his eyes and corralling his needful passion he pushed them back. _'Not yet… not now.'_

He remembered nothing of the ride home, only the feel of Sara's lips on his, her body pressed to his, a long, slow, sensual seduction… foreplay that carried them to bed… her gently passionate fingers peeling away the layers of the darkness of the night, enough that he could almost lose himself in the comfort she gave.

Less gentle, he tugged at the fabric of her dress, freeing her breasts, cupping their perfect globes with hands trembling in need of her, and she drew his head down to their pert peaks, fueling the inferno burning inside of him still more. He moaned her name; lay her down as she wriggled from the rest of her clothing… wrapped herself around him as he sank inside of her; cried out for him as he took her with the strength of his passion. Hot… visceral… the uncontrolled force of nature for which she named him. _'What will I do without you?  How can we survive this… even apart?'_

Stars ricocheted inside of him, canons in the firmament of his decaying heaven as he came so hard the world dissolved into a momentary pure white, unstained, unsullied, and the whisper of her name fell from his lips, a prayer over and over… and over…

"My Joe…" she whispered back, her body still pulsing around his, and her words unlocked the tears once denied.  He sobbed in her arms, her fingers stroking with the tenderness of an angel's feather through his hair, slowing as exhaustion, and the last vestiges of their shared high began to take her, drag her toward sleep… away from him.

No going back.

The pain of the unknowing goodbye softened him and he lay back, away from her, hushing her as she murmured in sleepy protest, drawing up the comforter as he lay wide awake – a rock on which she laid her head – trying to be…  Failing to be. New tears burned from his already sore eyes. _'Oh, Sara… please, baby if you never do anything else… ever… stop me.  Stop this.  Save me.'_

"Just one more time."  Even as he whispered the words breathlessly through his stifled tears, not wanting to wake her again, he knew she could not – or rather she could, but he couldn't let her.  Not this time.  If he ever loved her, he had to embrace the cold, darkness that was inside of him, perhaps for good… perhaps to the very end of him.

_'Bitch!'_

The thought startled him as Cameron's face swam before his eyes, the hate in her expression, the contempt, the coldness… not of that evening, but of all the times he looked at her and overlooked the expression she wore, no… reveled in it.

_'I told you, you WERE the one for me that I could be myself with, until you pushed me away, now Sara is, only I have no choice but to cut out my heart and leave it bleeding at your doorstep – again!  Why couldn't you just LISTEN?  To me… to Donna, Bosworth… anyone!? Why bring this mess back to my door, and BLAME me for it… heartless, selfish… naive fucking bitch. Perfect mirror… a perfect mirror to parts of me I wanted… parts of me I needed. Maybe that's why I could never completely walk away… no more.  NO. MORE._

_'God…!'_

He pressed the heels of his hands to his tortured eyes, raked his fingers down over his chest as though to split himself apart; tear open the scars that were the only legacy his mother had left him, and maybe finally, _finally_ free himself – from the chains of the past, from the guilt of the present… embrace the pain that was all he could see in his future.

_'Is this what you felt?  Is this what he drove you to? Drove YOU to find any escape you could…? Damn you, WHY?  Why couldn't you have—?'_

Sara stirred at his side, drawing his gaze her way, his eyes blurred as he looked on her again, curled up against him, vulnerable… a softness in the harsh world of her snake of a father.  No.

Turning on his side to face her, heedless of the run of tears the movement released over his face he reached out a tender hand, as gentle and as painfully loving as he had _ever_ been, and he brushed back the stray strands of her hair.

"You won't understand why I'm doing this," he whispered, his voice thick with tears, "We both of us missed it; walked right into it… never believed a man could _treat_ his own flesh and blood this way." He leaned closer, shared breath for a moment, before kissing her softly, a lingering, sorrowful kiss. _'Should have known better… kept my guard up. Not as if my own father was any kind of shining specimen of fatherhood.'_ The snort of irony that left him came out more as a sob. The sound rousing Sara enough that she wrapped her arms around him, and for a time, faltering, he let her hold him, allowed himself to take a breath of comfort one last time.

Then he pulled away, catching her hands as she sleepily tried to keep him with her, as he prepared to rise – barely dawn, and he couldn't delay any more – he kissed her again and told her, "It's all right.  Go back to sleep."

Then leaning closer to her ear, he whispered, "Just promise me you'll always remember… I love you. I always will, and I'd rather tear myself to shreds than see you hurt and used any more."

He slipped away from her then.

Rising naked from the bed he walked through the mostly empty apartment and picked up the phone, dialing the number he needed from memory. It rang for quite a long time before there was any answer, before a sleepy and disgruntled voice growled an acknowledgement from the other end of the line.

"Jacob, it's Joe."

"Have you got _any_ idea what time it is?" Then a pause, and this time Joe _heard_ the construct in the tone as Jacob asked, "Is everything okay?  Sara, is she—"

"This is nothing to do with Sara," he said, his voice clipped. "This is between you and me, and it's past time we settled it once and for all."

"Joe, you aren't making sense," Jacob's voice held protest. "Go back to bed.  Call me at a decent—"

"No. You'll meet me at the country club in an hour. I think you'll want to hear what I have to say." He pause, took a breath. "I don't want to have to wake the share-holders before nine am."

"Are you threatening me?" Jacob's voice became harsh, the veneer of 'fatherly' politeness completely dropped. "How dare you—"

"It's not a threat, Jacob," he answered mildly, almost bored with how easily he'd managed to rouse the Wheeler elder to a fighting stance.  ' _Too easy, take care… but oh, I know what you did… what you've BEEN doing all along, you rat-bastard, and I will call you on it before the WORLD if I have to.'_ "I promise you, if I don't see you in an hour, you, your little pet puppet – maybe even West Group itself – are done."


	2. Ivory Towers

_Act 1 – Ivory Towers_

 

The lights of the city across the bay far below him shone like mocking beacons, reminders of everything he didn't have, _couldn't_ have.  His eyes glazed as he looked through his own reflection and the reflection in the darkened glass to the blur of night beyond. The cold was inviting. _A corpse that just forgot to lie down and stop fighting_.

A soft knock behind him refocused his attention and using the glass as a mirror he watched as his secretary opened the door and stopped just inside the doorway.

"Mister Clark is here, Sir."

"Show him in," he answered, and taking a deep breath pushed away from the treachery the window presented, he turned, fixing his face into the welcoming expression that matched the brief, all but unreachable, spark of warmth that clung to life in his heart.

"Gordon!" He approached the man, but made no attempt to offer a handshake, and the look on Gordon's face was almost as frigid as absolute zero. Instead Joe gestured toward the corner couches. "Come on in, have a seat.  Can I get you anything?"

Releasing Gordon from the pin of his own intense gaze, he moved to a low cabinet that stood beside the wall, beneath an enlarged print of a non-descript location. He tried not to look at the picture, already reaching for two glasses and the decanter to prevent his thumb from running once more across his empty ring finger, even before Gordon answered.

"So this is where you've been hiding the last few months," Gordon said. His voice was flat – without any of the earnest warmth that had been there the last time, _not quite the last time_ , the two men had spoken, and then nodding added, "I shouldn't but—" with a shrug.

"Hardly hiding," Joe smiled as far as the bridge of his nose, and came to sit at right angles to Gordon, handing him a generous tumbler of whiskey. "But tell me what you've been up to.  Catch me up, it's been a while and I…" he trailed off and then, fighting, warming in spite of himself. _No… he threw away what could have been in favor of—_ He took a breath, stopping his own train of thought, too painful, even now, to consider the word, his own personal, destruction wrapped up in a few simply syllables. Raising the tumbler he held in his own hand toward the other man said, "Simple friendship, Gordon."

Gordon frowned, and Joe saw it take a moment or two before Gordon realized that he was proposing a toast, and tried to put aside his own… disquiet. _Damn the man.  I got this.  I_ had _this!_

Glasses clinked and he felt examined as he sat back, raised an eyebrow in query as he took a large pull from the glass and turned his eyes Gordon's way. It felt an age before the other man spoke, and then it was a soft query, the kind that cut through the layers of bullshit that he wore as a shield; tried to. _Damn him to Hell!_

"How have you been, Joe… really?"

He shook his head, set down the tumbler on the table in front of them and looked at his hands. No reason he should open up at all, should have just turned the question right around, but something in the sincerity and warmth he felt from Gordon, surprising given the tone of the other man's initial communications, slipped under the lapel of his business suit and stripped him of the detachment that blanketed him – his shroud.

He sighed.

"Even though they decided to forgo bringing criminal charges, I'm being sued by West Group for my part in the WestNet fiasco…" _Mutiny… it was Cameron that did this… her call… her scheme…_ "I'm _embroiled_ in the middle of the counter suit against Wheeler that I want _no_ part in, and if I hadn't kept… sending them back unopened, my desk drawer would be overflowing with—"

Surprising him, Gordon leaned over, and as if he knew what he'd been about to say, caught hold of his wrist, when he lowered his hand from running his fingers through the side of his hair; a nervous habit he'd developed, to mask the moments of emotion that so often threatened to overwhelm him in the last several months.  He was disturbed to find his hand shook in the other man's grasp. _Keep it together, Joe. You got this._

"I told you to just get on that fucking plane, Joe," Gordon said, his voice earnest, then as if he were psychic and could see through to the heart of Joe's crippling agony, he said,  "You could have refused to sign, you know?"

Again he shook his head, and then leaned forward, freeing his wrist from Gordon's grasp he rested his head in one hand and squeezed the bridge of his nose with the other, where the perpetual headache seemed lodged.

"Joe MacMillan, you're an a—"

"Accident, yeah," he sighed, his voice cracking on the word. "So I'm told."

"Ass," Gordon corrected him, "You're an ass!"

"That too," he agreed, and with another sigh, he picked up the half empty tumbler settled back against the leather of the couch.  Then he turned his head to face Gordon again and with a huff of Irony gestured around the office. "Business is booming. I assuming that's what this is about."

"Joe…" Gordon started, but shaking his head he interrupted.

"Come to add your fuel to the fire – I've heard immolation is a nasty way to go."

"Joe…"

"And you, Gordon, what about you?" The skin around his eyes creased in genuine concern, riddled with a guilt at his outburst that he did not want to feel, he allowed himself to ask, "Did you work it out with Donna?"

"No… yeah… no."

He chuckled without humor. "Which is it?"

"Yeah… well kinda." Gordon threw back his own large gulp of whiskey, then confessed, " _That's_ what this is about."

"I'm listening," he answered, and even with the tone of deep suspicion in his voice, the sentiment was genuine, though he had no idea how _he_ of all people was in a position to help Gordon salvage what was left of the man's marriage. _Another casualty of Cameron's schemes._

** ~~ ** ~~ **

She wiped her eyes for what felt like the millionth time. It was getting to be a pattern, a loop of pain in which she'd stuck herself right in the middle.  Didn't take a moment to breathe… didn't take a moment to _think_ , and so she sat and started at the letter for another twenty minutes, unmoving, as she waited for her father to join her at the restaurant.  It didn't help. It wouldn't help… never helped.

Just another loop, another pattern. He'd come, she'd snatch the envelope from the top of the table into her lap.  He'd kiss her cheek, and it would follow the exact same script from the, 'Hello, Sweetheart. Sorry I kept you waiting,' to the 'Give yourself time… it's only been six months.'

He didn't understand.  He _couldn't_ understand.

"You don't have it in you, do you, Dad?" she asked his retreating back as he walked away.

They say regret it one of the most unforgiving of emotions, and in the last several months she could truly believe it, felt crushed under the weight of it.  She'd tried to explain, to reach out, but her letters just came back… unopened – as this one.  Except no… not quite the same.

She ran her fingers over the hand written letters scrawled across the address of MacMillan Utility – _Return to Sender_ – and it was in _his_ hand, _his_ penmanship and not some nameless, faceless secretary. Tears came to her eyes again.  She wasn't one prone to that kind of reaction; liked to think she was stronger than that, but since her father's _stupid_ annual shareholder's meeting…

_Why didn't I read the signs? I know him, I should have known there was something wrong. The failure was_ mine _not his, and the one time I needed to be me… I was… somebody else._

…she had challenged, instead of supported, attacked instead of defended… let the insecurity of a lifetime of playing 'second fiddle' that had burst over her on the comedown from the MDMA drive her to unreasonable jealousy and see in him something that wasn't there.

"Excuse me, ma'am…" She looked up as the shadow fell over her, and the waiter appeared at her side, "Will there be anything else?"

Hastily she wiped at her eyes one more time, and mutely shook her head before catching her breath and apologizing for taking up the table when no doubt there were others waiting.

This couldn't go on. She needed help, but didn't know where to turn to get the support she needed. There was nowhere left.  No one…

"Wait," she heard her own voice and almost started, surprised at it, and at the thought running through her head. The waiter turned back.  "Is there a phone I could use… please?"

"Out in the lobby," the young man replied softly, "You'll find the public telephones there."

She nodded her thanks and picked up her purse, and the letter, that she went to trouble of carefully putting in its side pocket as though she didn't wish for anything to happen to it; as if she felt it had already suffered enough in the back and forth, push and pull.

_Neither one thing nor another._

She nodded her thanks, and walked, a tad unsteadily – though more due to the emotion than the wine she'd had with lunch – toward the lobby and the short bank of phones she saw there, fishing in another pocket of her purse for a quarter with which to make the call.

The call connected quickly, more quickly than she was prepared for, and when the receptionist answered, "Lucius Hearn Creative, how may I direct your call?" she stammered more than once or twice before she manage a complete sentence.

"May I speak with Martha Lorde?" she said, stumbling over the name.

"Is she expecting your call?"

"No." Her heart pounded in her chest for a long moment as she realized that the woman she wanted to speak to might not even _take_ her call.

"May I ask who's calling?"

"Tell her it's Sara," she said, in a tiny voice. "Sara Whe—MacMillan."

"One moment please."

The line went dead, her heart with it, seemed to seize inside of her, and she counted the seconds as if she were counting off the time between the flash of lightning and the rolling of thunder.

_…God, you're lost…_

Her own last words to Joe floated through her mind just as the click sounded on the other end of the line, and the strength of a warm voice surrounded her like downy arms, welcoming and worried.

"Baby?"

The single word unlocked her again, unmade the lie of strength with which she'd surrounded herself, and her hand flew to cup the receiver against her mouth as though she could catch the sob that escaped her and somehow force it back inside; deny it.

"Mom," she gasped, "I've made a _huge_ mistake!"

** ~~ ** ~~ **

"You don't even have to worry about me… you know… going behind your back…?"

Joe shook his head more emphatically and signaled the bar tender for two more, loosening his tie still more as he felt himself getting a little hotter under the collar – literally.

"I wouldn't think that of you, Gordon," he tried to interrupt, felt the inevitable slide toward dangerous ground coming up, inexorably, if he allowed the other man to continue. Gordon went on oblivious.

"…because if I say anything, or if anyone finds out, then Donna…"

"I can't let you do this," he tried again to interrupt, "You know that."

"You can't stop me, Joe." Gordon said, and picked up the beer, half draining the glass. "This was _my_ idea, _my_ work—"

"And you gave it to me," Joe countered.

"I _gave_ it to you so that you could get Sara back."  The tones in Gordon's voice where hurt, plaintiff, as if he still thought that was in any way possible. "Not so you could… sell out and—"

"That's not going to happen, Gordon," he ripped the words from deeper than his heart; deeper than _any_ part of him with all the attendant pain, evident in the tone of his voice, the expression on his face. "And I _gave_ you the opportunity to come on board with this, but you blew me off." He held up his hand then as Gordon opened his mouth to protest. "I know. I know why you did what you did, but I wanted you _with_ me on this, Gordon until you said—"

"Mutiny… I know," Gordon sighed, "Listen, Joe… I know what happened was… was Goddamned awful, all right? Unforgivable. What Cameron—"

Faster than he thought he could possibly move, as drunk as he was starting to feel, Joe's hand closed around the fabric of the lapel of Gordon's jacket, and twisted, using the sheer trembling force of his pain to pin the other man against the top of the bar.

"Don't you speak her name to me!" he hissed, his contempt boiling over into blame… into hate… into cold, hard rage. "What she did to me was deliberate, and calculated, and born of pure spite!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…" Gordon pushed against his chest with one hand and seemed to be trying to wave to someone with the other, and not until Joe felt the hands of two of the bar's employees clamp tightly around his arms did the blinding mist begin to fade, and he eased up his hold on Gordon, barely hearing the muttered assurances to the men behind him as he fought to get a hold of himself. Finally hearing Gordon's words as he gave himself a mental dressing down. "You're right, Joe.  You're absolutely right.  What she did was vindictive, and cruel and deliberate.  She knew what she was doing, right from the off. Donna did too."

"Donna was a part of this?" the breath went out of him in a rush, his face creasing into a hurt and confused frown.  He knew Donna didn't like him, and trusted him about as much, but to imagine her as a part of that scheme…

"I hate what she's become working there," Gordon answered, by way of a confirmation. " _I_ hate it there, and I'm… I refuse to lose myself to that woman's twisted vision of what could have been right and pure and good, in Donna's hands."

"So what are you going to do?" he asked, his head still spinning with the revelation Gordon had just bestowed.

"I've done it," Gordon answered, "And it's not about what _I'm_ going to do, it's what _you're_ going to do. I told you."

"And _I_ told _you_ ," he countered. "I can't let you do that.  I won't let you harm what you and Donna have together. I won't be a party to that."

"Have?" Gordon shook his head, "Had, and so long as she's under Cameron's thumb then _nothing_ is going to change that.  I _know_ my wife, and the way she… what she said about—"

He raised an eyebrow as Gordon broke off, for a split second wondering what the other man had been about to say, then a flash of insight cut him open again, and he sighed.

"Me. What she said about me," he said. "It's okay, Gordon, you can say it." Then with another breath he added, "But you're still not going to be moonlighting at MacMillan Utility. You'll find another way."

"This _is_ my other way. _Our_ other way," Gordon told him, and as Joe watched Gordon reached into his inside jacket pocket and pull out a folded bundle of paper haphazardly stuffed inside a plain white envelope too small for its bulk.  He placed it on the top of the bar, and keeping his hand on top of it, slipped it toward Joe.

"What is this?" he asked, suspicion pricking at the back of his neck.

"Something you don't want," Gordon said, adding, "and that I don’t' want to give you.  We're going to do this, Joe."

Gordon lifted his hand, and Joe picked up the envelope, shaking out the papers, unfolding them, and reading quickly as their weight settled over him.  But it wasn't anger, it wasn't fear… it was the weight of irony and it its wake he could do nothing but release the tension in a bitter chuckle, as he slid the papers back into the envelope, and then into his own inside pocket.

"All right, Gordon, you win," he said softly, "this time. But we meet in my office first thing tomorrow; get everything down in writing. If this goes south—"

"It won't."

"If it does, I won't let you hold me responsible for _your_ choices."

"It won't go south." Gordon insisted, and slipped his hand toward Joe once more across the top of the bar.  This time something hard scraped across the wooden surface.  When he lifted his hand, Joe couldn't help but let out another sad huff of irony from behind a tired, slightly inebriated smile. He picked up the object from the bar, turning it over in his hand, savoring the feeling of its texture and shape against his fingers one more time, before he shook his head, and slipped it back toward Gordon in the same way that it had been passed to him.

"Keep it," he told him. "I've moved on."

_My touchstone might as well be a million miles away from here right now."_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The Prologue of this story was set post S02-09, this continues post S02-10. It wasn’t going to be that way originally, but in light of the events in the finale, I could go forward no other way.


End file.
